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12 February 2012

Branding Love - Creative Valentine's Day Campaigns

Valentine's Day - or, as men like to call it, Extortion Day! ~ Jay Leno

If it's a holiday/event/occasion recognised by the masses then chances are us marketers will make it an advertising campaign. In fact, the more cynical would have you believe that Valentine's Day itself was created by chocolate, flower and card selling companies to create additional revenue - along with those other suspect occasions Mother's Day, Father's Day and Boxing Day. I'm not complaining though - by now you've probably picked up that I like ads - and therefore applaud any occasion that inspires more advertising creativity (and perhaps ends up getting me flowers!). I've gathered a few samples of the most creative Valentine's Day ads this year - take a look and tell me your favourite! Or if you think advertisers should leave love well alone!

Heineken's Serenade

The Serenade app builds on Heineken's "The Date" - part of the brand's "Open Your World" global campaign. The app allows users to customise a Valentine's serenade to a Facebook friend. You get to choose "who" you want to ask out, "why" you want to go out with them, "what" the legendary date will entail and of course "why" they should say yes. The details are then incorporated into a song that can be sent to the lucky valentine.

Kraft's latest campaign for Macaroni Cheese is "You know you love it" and to help spread the love they've come up with a unique Valentine's Twitter campaign.

Every message of love shared on Twitter between 12th-14th February tagged with #VoiceOfLove will be sent to Ted Williams. Williams is the homeless man with the golden voice who shot to YouTube fame in early 2011. A number of these tweets will be chosen to be read out by Williams as part of a Kraft video.

There's also a philanthropic component to the campaign - further sharing the love - every #VoiceOfLove tweet will trigger a donation of 100 boxes of Mac & Cheese to Feeding America, a homeless advocacy group. Kraft will give up to a 100,000 boxes this Valentine's Day. You can follow Kraft and the campaign on Twitter. They also have a number of cute cartoons (like left) under Valenshares on their Facebook page.

Westfield Love Billboards Westfield New Zealand ran a competition to have your love note emblazoned on 2m high billboard (and a chance to win a $5,999 diamond ring). 12 billboards around NZ were unveiled on Valentine's Day - the full entries can be viewed at Stoppress.

One of the winning billboards that was unveiled in Auckland

Teleflora Super Bowl Ad Even the most watched sports event in the world is not immune to Valentine's Day - Teleflora uses the beautiful Adriana Lima to convince the male audience that Valentine's Day is all a game of 'give and take'. Sex sells right?